Mammal of Interest
by Sir Talen
Summary: A routine prisoner transfer results in Nick and Judy being unexpectedly attacked, and ex-Mayor Bellwether being kidnapped by the mysterious "Wolf in a Nice Suit."
1. Chapter 1

**Mammal of Interest**

"Dispatch, Van Three is 10-76 to Zootopia Penitentiary," Judy said crisply into the mike in the seat beside Nick, as he guided the van out of the police lot and into Zootopia's early morning traffic. "ETA ten minutes."

 _10-4, Van Three,_ Clauhauser replied back at Precinct One. _Have fun!_

"Oh, oodles," Nick said, once Judy had clicked off. "Can't wait to see Smellwether's face when she finds out the chief chose us to transfer her over to the feds." The fox grinned over to his bunny partner.

"Try not to gloat too much," she replied, even though her own mouth was turning up in a smile. "Bellwether probably isn't looking forward to a federal terrorism hearing."

Nick lifted up his sunglasses to glance over at Judy briefly. "Don't tell me you're actually feeling _sorry_ for her?"

"Maybe just a little," she admitted. "I mean, what she did to all those predators was unforgivable, but she might not have been pushed over the edge if she'd been treated right by Mayor Lionheart. I can't believe she acted evilly for no reason."

The fox officer just shook his head. "You just like to think the best of everyone, Carrots."

"Don't worry, I've got you to keep my ears on straight," she replied.

"I shall be cynical for the both of us then," he replied, putting his paw over his heart briefly. He shut up as traffic began to build up, guiding the van with the occasional mutter at the cars in front of them. "This thing drives like a whale. Wish we could have used a police cruiser for this."

"Sure you don't want me to take over?" she teased. "Or put on a set of training wheels?"

"I got this," he muttered. "I didn't _need_ to know how to drive before I applied to the ZPD. When did you pick it up, farmer bunny?"

Judy did laugh then. "You learn early on the farm. I was driving our family's combine before I was thirteen."

"Yeah, yeah. Uphill, both ways, in the snow," he growled. Then they finally came to the turnoff for the Zoo Pen, a windowless concrete building behind triple electric fences topped with barbed wire. The two officers both passed their ID's and paperwork to the tiger guards manning the front gate, and after a few moments were waved in. Nick pulled up at the front doors, hopping out and waving his tail briefly to work out the stress kinks. He saluted briefly as the warden, a middle-aged elephant, came out to meet them. "Transferring Prisoner THX-6118 from Zootopia Penitentiary to meet Homeplains Security at Zootopia International Airport."

"They just send the two of you?" the warden rumbled.

"Two escorting officers is standard for a single prisoner transfer scenario, sir," Judy said brightly.

Nick nodded and then added, "I think we can handle one little sheep in pawcuffs."

The warden shrugged, and waved to a camera mounted over the prison entrance. The heavy steel door trundled back, revealing Bellwether, dressed in a bright orange prison jumpsuit, wearing wrist and leg irons, flanked by two guards. When she caught sight of Nick and Judy, her downcast face suddenly twisted into a snarl. "You two!" she snapped. Her eyes widened in surprise as she caught sight of Nick. "What are you doing in that uniform?" she demanded.

Nick grinned gave her his best regulation salute, "Officer Nicholas P. Wilde at your service, Madam Ex-Mayor."

"Nick decided to join the ZPD after you were arrested," Judy said. While Judy didn't normally have a malicious bone in her little bunny body, Nick thought her smile was just a _tad_ smug as she told Bellwether this.

"A _fox_ police officer? I don't believe it!" Bellwether snarled.

"Hey, this is Zootopia. Where anyone can be..."

"Save it!" Bellwether shrugged off her guards and shuffled forward. Judy helped into the van and secured her to the passenger seat in the middle of a small, box-like steel transport cell, while Nick finished signing off paperwork with the warden.

"Want me to drive?" she asked, as the both hopped back into the van.

"I got it," he told her. "I'm not gonna get better if I don't practice." He put the van into gear with a jerk and pulled out into traffic.

Judy looked at him. "You sure you don't me to drive? You're a little rough with the gearshift."

"Totally worth it," he assured her, shoving it into second. When the van lurched again he was rewarded with a loud _ow!_ from the rear compartment, as Bellwether's head bounced off the back of her seat. He squinted into the rising sun as the approached the exit ramp leading to the freeway and the airport. A female Persian leopard in a bright orange safety vest and hard hat was laying out traffic cones, blocking the exit and earning frustrated honks from the rush hour traffic. "Seriously, road work at this hour?" he asked. He starting punching up an alternate route into the GPS mounted on the van's dash. "Carrots, tell dispatch we're diverting."

"Right," Judy said. She picked the radio mike, and started to report. "Dispatch, this Van Three. We're diverting onto Cloudleap Ave. to avoid an obstruc... _Nick, look out!"_

Nick slammed on the brakes, throwing them both against their seat belts, as a figure ran out into the street in front of the van. It was a tall, dark furred wolf, dressed in a sharp business suit, a gas mask covering his face. Nick had just enough time to think, _Wow, that's a_ _ **nice**_ _suit,_ before the grenade launcher in the wolf's arms fired, and van's windshield shattered into a thousand pieces.


	2. Chapter 2

Chief Bogo stared the two officers, both sitting on the curb a few yards away from the wrecked police van, resting nose first against a cast iron lamp post. Wilde was sitting still, except for the occasional wince as a paramedic picked bits of glass out of his fur, while Hopps was breathing unsteadily into an oxygen mask, trying to clear her lungs out. "Are you up to this, Hopps?"

"I'm... kaff! I'm fine, sir," she said, eyes red with tears, her small chest heaving up and down as she fought to catch her breath. "Gotta get our statements in before... kaff... the memories get blurry."

Wilde, eyes also red and still tearing, looked only marginally better than his partner. "She's right, Chief. We need to get this done."

He nodded. "Start from beginning then. What happened after you picked up Bellwether?"

"Everything seemed all right, at first," the fox said. "I pulled out into traffic, heading towards the on ramp. But it looked like it was blocked by construction, or something. Must have been a set up, herding us into the ambush."

"It was a Persian leopard, female. Maybe in her late twenties, early thirties I..." Hopps bent over coughing again.

"And your attacker?" Bogo prompted.

"Definitely a wolf," Hopps said, regaining her breath. "Taller than average, black fur, wearing a gas mask and a suit."

"A suit?" Bogo asked, eyes narrowing.

"Yeah, I thought it was weird too," Wilde said, a ghost of a smile passing over his face. "Seriously, if you're going to ambush somebody, you should wear some practical coveralls. Much cheaper dry cleaning bill."

"Nick, don't make me..." Hopps tried to raise an admonishing finger, and bent over in another coughing fit. Wilde looked her in concern, gripping her paw until she was able to talk again. "Anyway," she said, "he fired a grenade right at us. Smashed a hole in the windshield. Tear gas."

"I jammed on the brakes and tried to serve out of traffic, right into the damned lamp post," Wilde continued. "Couldn't see anything between the gas filling the compartment and trying not to puke and cry my eyes out at the same time."

"Did either of you fire your weapon?" Bogo asked.

"Didn't get the chance," Wilde admitted. "By the time I fell out of the driver's seat and was able to see, the suspect had already pulled Bellwether out of the van and into the SUV that pulled up. Driver was a bear, I could see that much."

"Polar bear?" the chief inquired.

"Brown," Hopps said. "I think. Definitely not one of Mr. Big's I'm sure."

"How did the wolf get the doors to Bellwether's compartment open?"

"My fault, Chief," Hopps admitted. "I... I just couldn't breathe. I started hyperventilating, and then I threw up and started choking."

"Sorry, Judy," Wilde said, looking down at the sidewalk. "I didn't even see you were in trouble."

"Not your fault, Nick," she reassured him. "You were already out of the driver's compartment and blind as well." She turned back to Bogo, her breathing slowing down, lung finally clearing of the gas. "Anyway, the wolf grabbed me by the scruff and pulled me out of the passenger seat. I had my dart gun, but I was too out of it to try and fire." Hopps, being a bunny, was too small and light to use a proper pistol, or at least not a very large caliber one, so she habitually carried an optional reguation air pistol with tranquilizer rounds. "He disarmed me and pulled the keys off my belt. I'm sorry, sir."

"Were you able to get a good look at him?" Bogo demanded.

"A little," she said. "His pelt was black, like Nick said, but with some salt and pepper, gray hairs I mean. Couldn't see what color his eyes were through the mask. He was... very polite."

Bogo leaned forward. "Wait, do you mean he spoke to you?"

She nodded. "Yes. He said, 'Sorry about this, Officer Hopps. Now please stay down.'" Hopps blinked, "Wait, how did he know my name?"

Wilde's ear perked up in interest. "Could have gotten it off your uniform tag."

"Maybe, but by then I was face down on the ground where he'd dropped me." She frowned. "No, not just face down. He made sure to set my face over the edge of side walk, so when I threw up I wouldn't choke. He could have just left me in the passenger set and grabbed my keys there. I'm pretty sure I would have suffocated though." She shook her head in disbelief, "I think he saved my life."

"One last thing," Bogo said. "That suit he was wearing. Did he have a tie on?"

Wilde blinked at the question. "No, come to think of it. It was very stylish though. Italian I think." The fox officer looked at the chief in curiosity. "Do you think you know this guy?"

"Not directly, but I've heard reports about him," Bogo told them. "Almost urban legends. A few years ago in New Yak City, there were sightings of what they called 'The Wolf in the Nice Suit.' Black, salt and pepper fur, stylish suit with no tie, and tended to speak very softly and carrying a helluva lot of fire power. He and a few unidentified compatriots managed to shed light on collusion between the police and the local mob. Big scandal."

"So he's a good guy?" Hopps asked, ears perking up.

"I wouldn't say good," Bogo rumbled. "He's a vigilante who left a few bodies in his wake. Though most of them were criminals, or cops so dirty that they probably bathed in a pig wallow. Even then, most of his targets ended up with just bullets in their kneecaps. And at least twice, he took out armored cars with the same MO used here."

"So what's his motivation for grabbing Bellwether?" she wondered. "She was already on her way to be tried for her crimes."

"That's what we need to find out," Bogo said. "From this point forward your top priority is to find the Wolf in the Nice Suit and Bellewether, and bring them both in for justice. Is that understood, officers?"

"Yes, sir!" they both replied.

"Good. Now get to work!"


	3. Chapter 3

Bellwether blinked, as the black cloth bag was pulled off her head. After she'd been grabbed, coughing and crying, out of the van by that huge wolf, she'd been stuffed, still pawcuffed, into the trunk of a sedan and driven around the city for almost an hour. Then the car had stopped and she'd been pulled out into a totally dark room, had the bag plopped over her head and moved up several flights of stairs to wherever she was now. She could smell comforting scent of old, dusty books, driving out the lingering smell of tear gas in her wool.

The world came into focus. She was in a library, or at least secure book depository, the shelves around her surrounded by a chain link cage. Standing in front of her on the other side of the cage was the tall wolf, mask removed, revealing penetrating gray eyes. Next to him was a shorter Persian leopardess and on his other side a small bespectacled marten leaning on a cane, and looming behind them a tall, furry bear. The leopard had a soy steak, or least Bellwether hoped it was soy, speared on a wicked looking combat knife, and was chewing on it idly. The bear, by contrast, seemed to be happily munching on a paperback copy of _I, Robot._

"Hello, Miss Bellwether," the marten greeted. "I'm very sorry about my associates bringing you here so abruptly, but it was our best opportunity to remove you to safety before you were placed in Federal custody."

She drew in a breath, straightening her glasses and giving the marten an annoyed glare. "I'm in a cage with four predators in front of me, and you're saying I'm _safe_?"

"Relative safety," the marten corrected, seemingly un-offended. "I can assure you that at worst we will place you back in ZPD custody when the situation has been clarified."

"What situation?" Bellwether asked.

"Whether you are going to be the victim of a violent crime, or the perpetrator."

The leopard smiled in an unsettling manner. "Personally, I'm hoping for perpetrator," she said.

Bellwether did her best to ignore that smile, raising her cuffed hooves. "I'm not in much position to do violence at the moment."

"Ah, yes. My apologies." The marten turned towards the well dressed wolf. "Mr. Roofe, could you please uncuff Ms. Bellwether..." He spotted the bear chewing the paperback and let out an exasperated sigh. "Bear, please. I've told you to leave the Isaac Asisloth alone." He grabbed a book at random from the shelf. "Here, take this Piers Antlery instead. No one will miss it." The bear ducked his head sheepishly and exchanged books with the marten, muttering something apologetic in what sounded like Dutch.

Meanwhile the wolf, Roofe, opened the cage door briefly to unlock Bellwether's cuffs. She flinched as he approached to kneel down in front of her and release her ankle shackles. "I'm not going to hurt you," he said, his voice surprisingly soft.

"Like you didn't hurt those two officers?" she demanded.

"I didn't. Why do you care?" he asked.

"Because if you murdered them, then I probably don't have much of a chance either." Bellwether rubbed her wrists and she was freed. The wolf stepped back out of the cage and secured the door.

"I didn't have to kill them," he said. "The tear gas did the job."

"Heck, you even left their kneecaps intact," the leopardess noted, as if kneecapping police officers was an everyday occurrence.

Bellwether glanced at the bizarre quartet of predators. "Who _are_ you people?" she asked.

"Call us... an investigative group," the marten replied, apparently the leader of the quartet. "We look into the affairs of individuals, and try to determine whether they are going to be the victim, or the perpetrator, of an act of violence. If the former, we protect them as best we can. If the latter, we stop them with every means we have available."

"Which usually isn't much," the wolf, Roofe, muttered.

"How could you not know whether they're one or the other?"

"I'll admit it's something of a self-imposed challenge. You'll forgive me if I don't bore you with the details as to why its necessary. Suffice it to say your number came up, and we took immediate steps. Now, of course, the entire ZPD is out looking for you, which is going to make our job perhaps a bit more interesting than it usually is."

"So, either you think I'm going to murder someone," she concluded, "or someone is going to try to murder me. Either way you want to stop it from happening."

"Precisely," the marten agreed.

Bellwether cocked her head. "You'd protect me, a sheep, a prey species? Why would you bother? You're all _predators._ Your job isn't to save _anybody_ , it's to hunt and _kill_." The leopardess just seemed to shrug the accusation off, but, curiously, the wolf nodded in agreement with her, his face sad.

The marten's expression, however clinical it was before, darkened considerably. "Some of our actions are morally ambiguous, I will admit, but you're hardly on the high ground. Your attacks with the Night Howler poison stripped over twenty predators of their reason and their free will, leaving them trapped in an atavistic state, some of them for over four _months_. Even though they have all recovered, the effects of their poisoning will leave deep psychological scars that they will be dealing with for the rest of their lives."

"I'm crying for them, I really am," Bellwether simpered mockingly. Then she snorted. "They deserved what they got. Zootopia needed to see them for what they really were, so prey species would never make the mistake of trusting anybody with fangs."

The marten cocked his head in curiosity. "So, on at least some level, you thought you were protecting all the prey species?"

"Yeah, I suppose I was," Bellwether admitted, though it was an angle she'd rarely considered. Mostly she had just enjoyed watching predator after predator lose their hairy minds, reduced to the savages they'd always been behind a veneer of civilization.

"Interesting. But even with that justification, was the price the prey paid worth it?"

Bellwether blinked. "What price?" she asked.

"Over twenty predators went savage, most of them darted in public areas to create the maximum amount of disruption possible," the marten pointed out. "Public areas where ninety percent of the citizens are prey. Didn't you ever consider how many of them were hurt, or even killed, when the predators attacked those around them? Think of it. You're a sheep, or a giraffe, or a raccoon, and suddenly your friend the tiger, or the lion, falls to all fours and starts growling. Would you run, or would you come closer, trying to see what's wrong?"

"I... I never thought of it like that," she said, the words seeming to leave an ugly taste in her mouth.

"Evidently not," the marten said. He nodded to her, the clinical expression returning to his face. "You may as well relax, while we take care of things. If you get bored, you have plenty of reading material in there. Good day, for now." He turned and began walking away, leaning on his cane, the other predators following him.

Bellwether sat on the bunk that had been set in the corner of the cage, staring at the locked door, trying to figure out why she suddenly felt so cold inside.


	4. Chapter 4

"You're sure you're okay, Judy?" Nick asked from his side of the cubicle they shared.

Judy stifled the sudden urge to blow her nose, the smell of tear gas seeming to still lingering in her nostrils even after a thorough shower and changing into a fresh uniform. "I'm okay, Nick. Don't worry about me. You got gassed just as badly, remember?"

"Yeah, and I outweigh you by about twenty pounds," Nick pointed out. "I wasn't the one who almost choked to death."

"Why don't we worry more about Bellwether and this mysterious wolf?" she asked, trying to divert his concerns. "We need to find them both before Homeplains Security starts breathing down Chief Bogo's neck."

"Yeah, yeah," Nick agreed reluctantly. He brought up several files on his desktop's screen, displaying the lengthy file they'd obtained from the NYPD on the Wolf in the Nice Suit, along with the footage from the Jam Cams in the area where they were attacked. "Our boy has quite a record in New Yak. Seven confirmed killings, all of people who later turned out to be very bad mammals indeed, and the maiming of at least two dozen more, usually by the aforementioned kneecappings. Which is pretty impressive, given a couple were administered with a BB pistol to hamsters."

Judy looked at her own screen, which was showing a picture of the jaguar taken from the cam nearest the exit she'd blocked, her face mostly hidden by her yellow hardhat. "Can't make out her face, but it's reported he has a Persian jaguar as one of his associates. Who apparently is even more violence prone than he is."

"Our lucky day she was just laying out traffic cones then," Nick noted. He zipped through the camera footage, trying to trace the origin point of the vehicle that had taken the wolf and Bellwether away. "Huh, that's weird."

"What?" Judy leaned over to see what he was looking at. "Where's the jam cam footage for the next street over?"

"Not there. Nor for the rest of the cams in a ten block radius," Nick said. "The video records for everything fifteen minutes before and afterward are missing from the system."

Judy frowned, nose twitching in agitation. "That can't be a coincidence."

"It isn't," a voice said outside their cubicle. The two officers turned in their chairs to see a male bunny with grey fur and peculiar looking black stripes on his face, looking them over, an earnest looking female squirrel with a laptop under her arm standing beside him. "The Wolf in a Nice Suit has extraordinary access to government computer networks, or at least he has allies who do." The bunny reached into the jacket pocket of his neatly tailored black suit, flashing a badge. "Jack Savage, Homeplains Security. My associate is Ms Heddy Lemur," he said, pronouncing the squirrel's last name Ley _mur_. "I understand you're the two officers who managed to lose the most dangerous terrorist Zootopia has ever produced?"

"We didn't lose her. We knew exactly where she was, right up until the grenade went through our front windshield," Nick countered sarcastically. "The ZPD doesn't normally deal with guys in business suits carting around military weapons in the street."

"Or buggering our computer records," Judy added. "We did the best we could when we were attacked."

"Your 'best' involved you both succumbing to tear gas and the wolf stealing the keys to Bellwether's transport cage off of Officer Hopps," Savage noted acidly. "Now she's in the hands of another set of domestic terrorists, possibly wanting to ally with her judging by their actions, and we have no idea where any of them are."

Judy took in a deep breath, trying to calm down. "Well why don't we find out together then? You say they've got a hacker good enough to break into Zootopia's government administrative network, right? What do we do to counter that?"

"That's what Ms Lemur is here for," Savage answered. "She's going to do a sweep of your network and try and ferret out the flaw in ZPD security."

"Excuse me?" Nick asked. "The Feds can't just start poking around in a local police department's computers without at least a warrant and the cooperation of the local government."

"I have a warrant," Savage replied. "And when it's a Homeplains Security matter, cooperation is optional. Now step aside and let Ms Lemur get to work. I've got to talk to your boss." With that he turned and walked down the hallway, leaving the officers alone with the squirrel.

Heddy scurried up the cloth wall of their cubicle and then headed over to Nick's terminal, pulling out an adaptor to hook her micro laptop to his computer. "Don't mind Jack," she said reassuringly. "His ears always get twisted into a knot when it comes to tracking the Wolf in a Nice Suit."

"I can see that," Judy agreed. She looked down at Heddy, and asked cautiously, "So… 'Lemur'?"

"Adopted," Heddy answered, smiling as she looked up at Judy briefly.

"Oh, sorry," Judy said, then hastily added, "Er, I mean about me being nosy, not about you being adopted."

"No problem, I get that a lot."

"Guess your parents were big _Blazing Saddles_ fans," Nick said conversationally.

The squirrel blinked. "Sorry?"

"Never mind," Nick said, then muttered softly, "No one watches the classics anymore."

"So how long have you been working with Agent Savage?" Judy put in.

"Oh, about three months," Heddy said, leaning over her keyboard and frowning at the screen. "I came in when he needed assistance on tracing some hacking of Homeplains' computer system after the Night Howler incident."

"I didn't hear about that."

"You wouldn't have," Heddy agreed. Then she smiled triumphantly, "Ah, here we go." The display on Nick's terminal flashed briefly, and then the footage of the Wolf's attack on the police van started up again. The image switched to one of the camera records Nick had tried and failed to access earlier, showing the SUV that had carried Bellwether and the Wolf away travelling down the street. "The hacker that hit you just removed the access tags to identify the footage, instead of erasing it completely from the system," she explained. "That's pretty clumsy compared to the traces of their work I've found in other systems, but maybe they were in a hurry."

"Thank you, this helps a lot!" Judy exclaimed. "This is great. Now all we have to do is track the SUV to where it parked, and get a good image of the license plate so we can identify the owner!"

"Nice job, Heddy," Nick put in. "We'll have to send a thank you note to your bosses at Homeplains Security."

"Oh, my boss isn't Homeplains Security," Heddy said.

Nick's ears twitched in curiousity. "Who are you working for then?" he asked.

"God."


End file.
